22

---

I let out a long, painful breath as Jordan helps me to my feet. “Okay, I’m officially ready to get out of here. My skin has stitched itself back together and I’m only ten steps from passing out dizzy instead of two.”

“That’s the spirit, kid,” Jordan says, their tone mockingly cheerful as they pick up the bag full of loot—money, drugs, and other sundries taken from the Coyotes’ den. We stalk about ten minutes along the side of the Delaware, mostly in the dark, until we reach somewhere where we’re certain that we’d see the Coyotes coming if they tried to catch us, plus, giving me more time to handle the worst of my injuries. My shoulder hurts the most but also feels like it’s healing the fastest, relatively speaking, while the burnt parts of my skin and eyelids have already started to slough and flake a little bit.

I watch as Jordan picks through baggies and bundles of stuff I’ve only ever dreamed of seeing, the sort of drugs one sees only in police procedurals, not in real life. I guess… not in the real life that I live, in the nicer rowhomes, with extracurriculars and parents that love me (in their own special way). I readjust my thoughts, remind myself that this is real life – just a real life for other people, who have it worse. Jordan takes each baggie, ties them together with a hair tie from their pocket, and then uses some gauze from the first aid kit to wrap them to a nearby cinderblock before hurling them into the Delaware the best they can.

It does not go very far, but it does roll down the shores and vanish under the black murk of the night. Jordan gives it a quick salute. “Some fish are about to have a really good or a really bad night.”

“I do not think anything is alive in the Delaware River at this point, I’m gonna be honest.” I wheeze, itching at my skin where it’s the most burnt. Already, the material packed against my shoulder feels a little tight, so I slowly work it out, trying not to look and trying not to pay attention to the wet feeling, and toss that into the Delaware too. It floats on the surface, clumped into an off-red lump, and Jordan takes a second to fix my dressing for me. “I also am not sure that we should be, like, putting material inside a stab wound.”

“That was just there to soak the blood, I didn’t put anything, like, in it in it,” Jordan elaborates. I shrug my shoulders, and wince. “But it’s all scabbed up now, like, 100%. Looks gnarly.”

“Please don’t describe my stab wound to me,” I ask politely. Jordan waves their hands around.

“I won’t! Jeez.”

With all the worst of the drugs and such discarded, we begin our trek, my body ravenously itchy. That’s the thing they didn’t tell me about regeneration powers – the itch. One might think it’s bad when they skin their knee and there’s some little dinky scabs that they just need to pry off with their nails? Try full body first degree burns coming off in real time, my brain screaming at me to just scrape them off. That’s the bad stuff.

We slowly navigate by map app and by landmark, stopping in an alleyway to change clothes at the dead drop that Jordan had prepared for us. I have to fit into some of Jordan’s clothes, which, surprisingly, are the exact same size as me, but I don’t look too beaten up with my costume stuffed into a ratty backpack. In the darkness, it just looks like I have a skin condition, swathes of skin on my arms and face and belly all pinkish and new like a baby mouse. Weird.

The taxi ride back to the abandoned music hall is uneventful. Jordan calls up the local taxi company with their phone, and they arrive in a nice yellow car for us. Jordan makes small talk while I stare out the window, their body thankfully bruise and injury free, for the most part, while I get the comfortable sensation of my skin healing out underneath me. By the time we get back to the music hall, I’ve received a text from my mom – phone with Jordan, rather than me, since it would’ve gotten smashed in the fight – and I shoot her back a selfie on the sidewalks, as if to say “yes, we’re still alive”.

She accepts that as an answer.

The abandoned music hall is a dark, decaying, decrepit monument to better times—times when people cared about music and art. Now it’s a dilapidated building filled with peeling paint, rotting wood, and a dismal sense of emptiness. It’s also the perfect cover for teenagers playing superheroes and supervillains, given that nobody else seems to give a damn about the place.

We enter through the front door, Jordan fumbling our keys, and make our way to the room we’ve designated as our planning and debriefing area. They dump the bag on the table and begin sorting its contents. The money, the weed, and then the first-aid kit, still with the rubbing alcohol scent clinging to it. They eye the money and the baggies with a clinical detachment, as if evaluating the spoils of war, the floorboards, uncared for, creaking underneath us with every motion like screaming ghosts.

“So,” Jordan begins, hesitating for a moment. “We’ve got… let’s count these stacks. Guesstimating that each one is a half inch and they look like stacks of twenties, that’s one, two, three, four, five, ten thousand dollars and then some assorted mixed bills that you can take,” Jordan says, more to themselves than to me, rummaging through one of the cabinets they have situated about to find a small kitchen scale. “And this is… nine ounces of weed, or a little more than half a pound. Good haul. You need any?”

I stare at the cash and then at Jordan. “Are you seriously asking how to split illegal substances and dirty money?”

Jordan shrugs, a grin sneaking across their face. “Everything sounds bad when you describe it like that. I assume you’re not interested in the weed?”

“I don’t smoke,” I reply, folding my arms over my chest as I settle into one of the distressingly comfortable couches, despite its rattiness.

“I didn’t ask if you smoked, I asked if you wanted any. I don’t care what you do with it. Sell it, give it to someone, make edibles with it. Honestly, you did most of the hard work, I’d give you 75% if you wanted,” Jordan says, kind of not getting the problem here.

I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. “That’s not… I’m good. It’s all yours. But what about the dirty money, won’t people like… trace that?”

“Oh, you’ve never laundered money before?” Jordan asks, raising an eyebrow to me. I gawk at them, about to start yelling, and they begin to cackle. “I’m kidding. Of course you haven’t. Like I said, five thousand of this I can spread across local charities, food banks, stuff like that. Two point five thousand goes to me and I’m going to reinvest it in this little hidey-hole of ours. Two point five thousand goes to you to… I don’t know, buy vintage soccer balls?”

“No, hold on, how exactly does one launder money? How do you expect a fourteen year old girl to launder money, Jordan Westwood?” I ask, folding my arms up a little tighter. “Answer that one before I tell you what I plan on doing with it.”

Jordan smirks at my indignation, like they’re thoroughly entertained by the naive little web I’ve spun around myself. “Whoa, whoa, hold up. Who said anything about needing an intricate plan? You’re overthinking this, Sam.”

“You were the one who brought up laundering money!” I exclaim, my voice taking on that indignant pitch that’s more befitting of a teenage squabble than two semi-vigilantes debating on the ethics of dirty money.

“Yeah, as a joke. Relax,” Jordan says, leaning back on their couch, old leather cushions clearly raked across by what are either dog claws or the claws of the largest cat I’ve ever seen. They scan the room, their eyes falling on a worn copy of ‘The Art of War’ that lies on a coffee table. “Look, here’s the thing. Neither of us are Fortune 500 CEOs or middle-aged men evading taxes. We’re teenagers, for God’s sake. What do you think the IRS is gonna do? Audit your allowance?”

“That sounds like something a supervillain would say before they’re exposed in some grand money-laundering scheme,” I retort, worried in fact about that very concept.

“Very funny,” Jordan drawls. “But in all seriousness, the most either of us is doing financially is maybe a part-time job, right? We’re not exactly in a position where someone’s scrutinizing our finances. We don’t file tax returns. The IRS isn’t going to catch a fourteen year old money laundering. Maybe me if I had a part time job, but I don’t, so… we’re golden.”

My brain is doing somersaults trying to pick apart the logic here. “So what, we just… keep the money and use it like it’s pocket change? Isn’t that risky?”

“No,” Jordan leans forward, their face earnest but their eyes twinkling with a hint of mischief. “Look, we’re not going to be flashy about it. We won’t buy yachts or designer clothes or whatever. Small transactions, Sam. Think about it. You want a snack from Wawa? Use the money. Need to pay for a cab? Use the money. It’s not like we’re depositing stacks into a bank. This stuff is untraceable if you’re smart about how you use it. Who knows where a teenager is getting money from.”

The suggestion lands on me like a novel concept, both unsettling and enticing. “So… stash it under my bed and pull out a bill when I want to buy a soda or something?”

Jordan laughs, leaning back and smiling a genuine smile. “Exactly. Treat it as your personal emergency fund. Unless you’re planning on buying a private island, I don’t think anyone’s going to notice.”

“I’m not sure I can buy a private island for three thousand dollars. Maybe a private barrel to float around the Jersey Shore in,” I reply.

“Exactly, this isn’t even that much money in the grand scheme of things. Yes, technically we stole it – from drug dealers – but, like, your parents do not put your allowance money in deductions in their taxes.”

“Actually, I–” I begin, about to correct Jordan for something that my parents definitely did do.

“Shut up, they do fucking not. Anyway. Nobody’s going to scrutinize a teenager spending forty dollars a week in cash. Just don’t be stupid. Don’t overcomplicate it,” Jordan cuts me off, swiping a hand across the air like they’re cutting it in half.

For a moment, I sit there contemplating the weight of our conversation. “You make crime sound so simple.”

“Only because people make it complicated,” Jordan says, tossing a bundle of cash lightly in the air before catching it. “So, we good?”

“We’re good,” I concede, my eyes lingering on the money before meeting Jordan’s gaze. “But if I end up behind bars because of this, I’m blaming you.”

“Don’t worry, that won’t happen unless we really pull a Robin Hood, and that can’t happen these days anyway. Nobody cares if you mug your local gangster. Like I said, Tacony, this place? It’s abandoned by the pigs. No Strawberry Mansion but, like… we’re not gonna get 911 called on us,” Jordan says, staring at the ceiling, continuing to toss about their ill-gotten goods. “They’d have to tell the police where they got the money from, and I’m sure the police know who the Coyotes are.”

“Wait, roll that back a little bit,” I say, winding my finger through the air in a tight little spiral. “What’s this about not being able to Robin Hood these days?”

Jordan turns their head towards me as they cut the air open with their powers, dragging a blanket over to them from the other side of the spacious main hall. “What, like the dark ages? Steal from the rich, give to the poor? Nah, it doesn’t work like that anymore, Sam. What are you gonna steal?”

“Their… money?” I ask, incredulously. Jordan laughs a bitter, spiteful laugh.

Jordan flicks a hand towards me to get my attention, and then makes uncomfortable eye contact. When they start speaking, I turn around, lying down myself, trying not to itch my shoulder. “First off, you’ve got to understand, most of the super-rich? Their wealth isn’t in these paper bills or even in some Scrooge McDuck vault full of gold coins. Nah, it’s in stocks, properties, assets you can’t just grab and run off with. How are you gonna steal a factory or siphon off someone’s Toroid shares? It’s not like they have billions just lying around in a bank account. Hell, if they did, it’d probably be in some tax haven halfway across the world. There’s no physical money anymore.”

Picking up a handful of the money from the table, Jordan lets it fall slowly back into the pile, the bills fluttering down like defeated soldiers. “But let’s say, hypothetically, you somehow managed to steal something big, something that actually makes a dent. Maybe you broke into their mansion and got some valuable paintings or whatever. Well, good luck with that, ’cause the law isn’t exactly a neutral referee here. You’re going up against people who practically own the lawmakers, the courts, and God knows what else. Hell, they might own the prisons you’ll get sent to. And you want to fence that painting you stole? Good luck with that. It’s all over the news. Nobody’s gonna buy it, and you can’t even cash in what you just took.”

“Fencing? Like… the sword sport?” I ask, trying to mask my confusion and put on an air of confidence – but that doesn’t make sense with the sentence Jordan just said.

“Fencing means ‘selling stolen goods’. Anyway,” Leaning back in their spot in the couch, constantly shifting, Jordan sighs. Then, they grin at me, a bit sadly, a bittersweet emotion. “You could argue that’s why these white-collar criminals get slaps on the wrist, while people like us—doing petty stuff compared to, say, tax evasion or market manipulation—get hit with the book. It’s not just about having a good lawyer, Sam. It’s about owning the entire damn narrative. We stole ten thousand dollars, big whoop. They make that much money taking a piss. It’s a nice fairy tale, but in the real world, it’s more like trying to drain the ocean with a teaspoon while someone’s pointing a gun at your head.”

“That’s kinda sad,” I reply, trying not to think about it too much. “Can you toss me a blanket?”

“Yeah, sure. Don’t get too worked up over it. The world is just like that sometimes,” Jordan says, throwing the blanket they were using over to my couch and then snatching another one with their powers. “Do you need music or something to fall asleep to?”

“No,” I lie, trying not to let loose the repeat soccer matches I listen to when I need to fall asleep, a playlist of all the world’s World Cups on repeat on my computer at night.

I don’t like lying down with my own thoughts. It’s not a nice place to be in – my own head, swirling like that.

“Sick. Catch you tomorrow.”

“Night,” I reply, pulling the blanket up over my shoulders as the conversation comes to a somewhat abrupt close. I consider, for a moment, trying to start it back up – maybe talk about boys or girls or sports or something, but within minutes, Jordan is snoring quietly, and, frankly, I’m feeling it too.

I’m asleep before I can even see it coming.

---

The days unfurl into each other like a scroll of moments, one scene indistinct from the next, with only a few marks to tell them apart. One of these marks is the pattern of bruises that increasingly mar my skin, a stark contrast to the paleness of my forearms, the dots of freckles across me. Each new bruise tells a story of another lesson learned, another scrape survived. Pinkish skin from cuts, burns, all sorts of injuries forms over the course of each day and night. The mounting stack of school assignments that I’ve neglected piles up but is managed, each one a stark reminder that I’m straddling two worlds, and each demands its own form of dedication.

The next day after our first outing — our encounter with the Kingdom weeks ago set aside as a dangerous anomaly — Jordan and I walk to school together. It’s uneventful, and the trip is a little overlong but not arduous, more of a good early morning workout than anything else. I encourage Jordan to wear sneakers, though, just because I’m sure they don’t want to be walking 40 minutes in platforms.

School happens around me, but its implications float in the periphery of my concerns. I should care, I should be worried, especially when the world outside keeps reminding me how much there is to lose. Yet, the traditional anxieties — grades, popularity, and societal norms — occupy a secondary space in my mind, as if pushed to the side by the more immediate concerns of survival and moral complexity. Where to put our “bounty money”, growing in an increasing stack underneath my bed. How much pressure to apply with a bite. Whether what I’m doing is right or wrong.

The numerical representations of my academic abilities, my grades, hover in a range that causes neither alarm nor celebration: mainly C’s and a few B’s. The grading letters sit quietly on the online reports supplied to me afterschool, a secret pact between me and the educational system. They know I have other things on my plate, and for now, they’re willing to look the other way, provided I don’t stray too far into the realm of utter negligence.

Then there’s track, the sport that holds a distant second place in my heart, filling the void left by the absence of soccer. I note the calendar tacked on my wall. It’s a paper battlefield, with days crossed off like the vanquished foes I leave in my wake, and the circled date of the track season’s start looming in November. The end of September looms overhead like a skyscraper, leaving me with a window, a buffer of weeks, a compartment of time that I can allocate to my nocturnal escapades. My lessons in combat outside what I’m learning with Rampart and the others – my tutoring in street justice, Jordan’s taught real-world practicalities.

As the days spiral forward, each one almost indistinguishable from the last, this narrative plays out within me. I have time, it assures me, even as the nights grow longer and the stakes climb higher. I have time to be more than one version of Samantha Small. I have time to be Bloodhound, and a student, and exhausted.

On Friday, another one of our nighttime excursions takes us to a location that puts a knot in my stomach. We’re infiltrating an underground dog fighting ring, buried deep in the darkest pockets of Wissinoming. The venue is a pungent cocktail of sweat, desperation, and the metallic scent of blood. The atmosphere is thick, practically a living entity itself, breathing in depravity and exhaling tension. It’s not just the danger that makes this place unsettling — it’s the moral rot that permeates the walls, the floor, the very air we breathe.

The faces I see as I step in are portraits of human souls lost to greed or violence. Menacing grins, eyes that have witnessed too much, and tattoos that announce violent allegiances all assault my gaze. I’m a kid in a nightmare, but I’m also Bloodhound, and I have work to do.

Safeguard is in their element here, thriving in confined spaces, and their use of power throws everyone but me off-balance. It’s as if the room itself revolts against the activities it’s been forced to host. Amid the ensuing chaos, I seize the opportunity to free every terrified dog we find. Their eyes, a mixture of confusion and cautious hope, meet mine as we release them from their chains, and they smell the solidarity of the beast as I bite their leashes apart. They scatter into the labyrinthine alleys, away from this hellhole, and while I know we can’t save them all or find them forever homes, disrupting the operation feels like striking a blow for good.

We do what we can in the moment, and in that moment, it feels like enough. Like rescuing these animals – mostly pitbulls, the encyclopaedic part of my brain notes – has done something important for the world, even though it’s just a tiny drop in the ocean of scum that is the Philadelphian underbelly.

While I’m focused on the dogs, Jordan has a knack for multitasking. Their eyes dart around, identifying potential threats and precious loot simultaneously. It’s like having a second brain that excels in dodging pitfalls. Over time, we’re getting better at this, our movements and decisions harmonizing like a well-composed duet. Jordan’s pragmatic approach balances my idealism, and together, we’re more effective, more in sync.

By the time we leave, we’ve also gathered a decent haul of “bounty cash” from the scene. It’s not what you’d call clean money, but Jordan has a way of making it useful. Over the weeks, this semi-ill-gotten wealth has been anonymously donated to local food pantries, animal rescues, anything in our neck of the woods that’s hurting for cash. It’s our way of redistributing resources, our own little subversion of a world where the scales are tipped so blatantly in favor of the wicked. It’s not a perfect system, but then again, neither are we. And so we keep doing what we can, night by night, learning and growing, and making the city a slightly better place one rescue, one operation at a time.

---

Days blend into evenings of patrolling and vigilante actions, nights bleed into predawn study sessions where my eyes struggle to focus on textbooks and assignments. In the faint glow of my desk lamp, I see shadows forming. Shadows of Liberty Belle, of Safeguard, of Puppeteer, of a life where I’m someone more than just Samantha Small, a 14-year-old girl trying to make it through high school without too many hiccups.

The following week, my mom starts mentioning Jordan more frequently at the dinner table, her curiosity barely veiled by her casual tone. “So, you’ve been spending quite a lot of time with this Jordan. When will we get to meet them?” I shrug it off, saying we’re just friends. My dad, a portrait of supportive but bewildered, nods but says nothing, taking another bite of his spaghetti.

“You know, if you’re a lesbian, that’s not something we have a problem with. Just. Just to make that clear.” My dad says, and I nearly gag on my drink, but for a different reason than I think he knows.

“I don’t think Jordan is a girl,” I say, deflecting the statement.

“Well, we don’t have a problem with you being heterosexual either,” He says, chewing thoughtfully.

“I think what Jordan’s got going on is more complicated than that,” I deflect again, trying to push my skull through the tablecloth so that I can avoid looking my family in the eye.

“Well, you can date them either way. Just so long as they’re kind to you, dear,” My mom says. “But no shut doors, if they come over. You know that.”

“Mom, I’m not… interested in Jordan romantically. And I hate this conversation. Can we move on to something else?” I say, trying to avoid noticing the theoretical steam coming out of my ears. And it’s true – I don’t really have that feeling for Jordan, not the same way I have for Gale, for whom our recreational flights have continued into the days, and not… Ugh, not for Rampart, who still makes me feel uncomfortably warm whenever we grapple.

“Sure thing, honey. We got a call from your teacher today. Your science teacher,” my dad replies mid-chew, which is not a sentence I want to be hearing ever. Never ever ever. My heart bottoms out into my pelvis and my blood runs cold in my veins. “Says you’re falling asleep in class?”

I sigh quietly and don’t reply. My mom glances at me, and then my dad. “Is everything alright? You know, if there’s anything you need to talk about…”

“I’m just training for track and field,” I say, well-rehearsed, knowing it would come to this eventually. “Did my teacher say if my grades were bad?”

“They were fine, actually. I asked the same thing. You’re doing better than most of the class,” my dad replies, not looking my mom in the eyes. She shoots him an easily-interpretable look – don’t encourage this behavior. “…But not by much, so don’t rest on your laurels.”

“You’re training for track? Like… at night? Sam, that’s dangerous,” my mom cuts in, getting more pragmatic than my father. “I mean, I know you have… your powers, darling, but… Let’s try to keep the nighttime training to a minimum, okay? Does the school let you use their track?”

“Not unless I’m signed up for a sport. Which I’m not, not in the fall,” I mumble through a mouthful of food. My parents look at each other, exchanging telepathic parent information.

“Well, I’m sure you’re going to be the fastest girl on the track team. Maybe the fastest student. You don’t need to push yourself so hard, you’re only fourteen, honey,” my dad says, reaching over to pat me on the shoulder. Instinctively, I flinch away from the physical contact, and immediately feel bad, my increasingly well-tuned dodging instincts over-reacting to the innocuous touch. I put my shoulder back towards my dad, and he gets the message, giving me two small pats. “You’re just a kid, Sam. Take it easy sometime. Have sleepovers.”

“Speaking of sleepovers–” my mom says, through a mouthful of spaghetti just like her husband. She swallows, and repeats her sentence, unmuffled this time. “Speaking of sleepovers, though, I would like to meet this Jordan sometime. Or maybe his mom. Or both.”

“Their mom,” I gently correct my mom.

“Right, their mom. Let’s try to get that organized some time, okay?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I answer, half-sincerely.

---

Jordan and I continue our nightly escapades. This time, we intervene in a planned robbery, saving a local shop owner who gives us grateful nods but wisely refrains from asking too many questions. We also manage to bust a small drug handoff at an abandoned park, scaring the dealers enough to scatter their stash before running off into the night. As we sit back, panting, amidst the scattered paraphernalia, Jordan looks at me and laughs. “We’re getting good at this,” they say.

“Yeah,” I smile back, bloodied knuckles and all, every fight leaving me with fewer and fewer bruises and marks than the one before. My skin has become a patchwork of scars, but even they are beginning to fade, even the distinctive ones across my belly, although they’re leaving behind thick, skin-colored mark where the surface of my skin is raised up, sort of like halfway between a scar and a… not-scar. “We are.”

I scroll through messages from my middle school friends. Their lives seem so distant, their problems a universe apart from mine. I read about homework woes, about crushes, about weekend plans. It makes me nostalgic for a simpler time — a time when my world wasn’t tinged with violent vigilantism, but my work is too important here to take time off.

So, I lay there in our home base, steadily improved by the presence of additional filtration, a mop-and-vacuum bot, air-conditioning units in the walls. The darkness of the vast ceilings is punctuated only by the dim glow of my phone screen, a window into a past life that I’m not sure how to return to. The silence feels oppressive, pushing down on me like a weight. A void asking to be filled by a girl who’s still figuring out how she fits into all of this.

And as I finally succumb to sleep, September crossing into October, it’s not the successes or failures of the past weeks that occupy my mind. Instead, it’s the gaping chasm between the life I’m living and the life that’s expected of me — a rift that grows wider with each passing night, even as I gain the skills and experiences that make me feel, ironically, more whole. More complete.

Every time I return to the home base, our headquarters, with a knife stuck in me, I feel more alive than ever compared to the humdrum existence performing “patrols” for litter and lost pets. I cherish my ‘hero team’, but Puppeteer taking a voluntary leave of absence for psychiatric assistance and the adults handling all the big boy stuff has left me feeling gapingly empty when I’m with them, even when I’m with the people I have crushes on. It all feels so vapid compared to the work I’m doing here on the streets.

With both leaders out of action, Liberty Belle still MIA and Puppeteer getting herself treated through inpatient, there’s no energy to do anything other than go through the motions. My fists, shins, and bones are getting increasingly strong thanks to Rampart’s training, moving up from sandbags to bags full of just straight up rocks. My combat style is evolving, and I take the opportunity to train with the Young Defenders as just that – training.

The routine is comfortable. I go to school. I try not to fall asleep. After school, I either train and patrol with the Young Defenders, or go and plan our next raid with Jordan. We rack up victories, or at least stalemate after stalemate. I’m still only a fourteen year old girl, and our odds get worse and worse every time, but my intention is never to win – my intention is to make people scared, to make people know that there’s no fucking around in this part of Philadelphia. I can’t say for sure if I’ve ever won any of my fights, but I’ve survived them – I’ve survived being stabbed about half a dozen times at this point, and I’m sure I’ve broken my nose twice, and I just keep bouncing back.

I look at Jordan as we prepare for another raid. Someone’s been shaking down people in nearby Palmyra for protection money, right across the bridge. Not technically my jursidiction, but close enough. Jordan does the heavy work of tracking down the criminal elements – how, I’ll never know – and setting up dead drops days in advance. Then, it’s just time to handle things.

I put on my costume, modified for these night operations. Wherever Jordan got their cloak from, they got me another one, along with a helmet, a little like theirs but with more freedom of face. Some glued-on dog ears on the top, and a couple of red high-vis accents hidden beneath, and I’m ready for action.

The Big Bad Wolf isn’t gonna let this shit stand. Not in her neighborhood.

---

Getting a text from Marcus is neither rare nor frequent, but it’s definitely a cosmic alignment when that text comes with an attached video and the phrase, ‘We need to talk.’ Normally, that sort of sentence only comes to me from my parents, and I haven’t gotten a text like that in at least a couple of months.

I sequester myself in my room, making sure to close the door with an exaggerated softness that’s designed not to attract attention. Even with the door shut, I can’t shake the unease stemming from the stacks of ill-gotten bills stuffed under my mattress, like the metaphorical pea underneath the princess’s bed. With trepidation, I tap the video’s play button, keeping my headphones’ volume low enough not to bleed sound but loud enough to hear over my pounding heartbeat.

As the video unfurls on my screen, my stomach performs an impromptu freefall.

The clip is far from a professional production, teeming with fuzzy visuals and shaky camerawork. Yet the raucous voice that blares through my earbuds is unmistakably mine, shouting, “I’m the Big Bad Wolf, and this neighborhood is under my protection. Get out before I bite your dicks off.” There’s a vaguely humanoid form shrouded in incandescent yellow flames, a spectral vision rendered by a clearly amateur drone struggling to keep focus in the pitch-black night, a multi-man showdown with a handful of thugs ducking in and out of combat with a clearly smaller girl. It’s almost cathartic, watching the whole thing over again, the dodging and weaving, the powering through adversity, and who could forget the climactic dropping of the overpass chunk.

“What about it?” I text back, my thumbs skimming over the on-screen keyboard. My hands feel clammy, sweating as if my palms were filling up from some internal bleeding, like a fresh wound filling up with blood. I despise the charade of ignorance I’m putting on.

Marcus doesn’t bite. “Don’t play dumb,” he retorts, like an investigator sniffing out a lie. “I know what my friends sound like. I’ve been listening to you talk for ages, dude.”

I give up the ghost. “Fine, you got me. So, what’s the plan? You looking for a cut? Are you gonna blackmail me?”

He’s typing for a while, the indicator staring me back. “What?” comes the painful, eventual reply. “No, dude. You’re my friend, why would I want that? I just thought you should know you’re kind of a big deal now, and that you need to, like, talk less on camera.”

“Huh?”

He sends me a hyperlink. My finger hovers for a moment before committing to a tap.

A webpage loads, replete with banners, posts, and a user interface that screams fan site, hosted out of someone’s closet. An online sanctuary for maybe twenty people, but that’s twenty more than I’d ever thought I’d have. My alter ego — the adrenaline junkie turned neighborhood watchdog — has fans. Real, genuine fans dissecting my every reported move.

‘Finally, some law and order in Northeast Philly,’ one post reads. Another gushes about recent pantry donations they’re attributing to me. Thread after thread of local legends, my mythology already writing itself in real-time. Two threads speculating details of my personal life (I must be in my early twenties, statistically. And with a single mom). One person asking for nudes and immediately hit with a public ban notification, to much applause. I… try to dump that one out of my head immediately.

“Cool,” is all I manage to text back, astonished and a little terrified. There’s even speculation about my powers, and zero mention of Jordan, or Safeguard. No – there’s one mention, in the thread about the sole video of me in action to exist. Some speculation about my unnamed “sidekick”. I file that away in my head to laugh at Jordan about later.

“Yeah, it is cool,” Marcus writes. “But, look, there’s posts here about sightings almost every other night. You good, man? Getting enough sleep? Holding up okay emotionally? Physically? Mentally?”

I pause, staring at the blinking cursor on my phone’s screen. I’m not sure how to begin answering his questions. Not when I’m not even sure what the answers are myself.

His text comes back after two minutes of no response. “Look, I’m not gonna tell anyone. I’m not gonna bug you about it. You’re my friend, and you’re talking less and less in the group chat, and I just want to make sure you’re like… okay, okay? Real talk, dude, I care about you. Even if we’re going to different high schools.”

There’s another pause while I try to think of a response, a little flabbergasted.

“I think you’re doing a good thing. I’m just worried because I don’t want one of my best friends getting shot by a gang member on Roosevelt.”

Another pause.

“Y’know?”

I think for another minute. “I understand.”

“That’s not an answer to what I asked,” Marcus immediately drills into me with all the efficiency of a particularly skilled dentist. “I asked if you’re doing okay.”

“I don’t know,” my hands type out, almost without me meaning them to. I hover over the send button, and then erase the message. I type in “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” and then I send that instead.

“I’m extremely unconvinced,” Marcus replies.

“I’m sorry,” I text back.

I can almost hear his sigh through the phone. “Look. You might have missed it because you probably haven’t looked in the group chat in a hot minute, but Lilly’s parents are going to be out for a couple of days over this weekend. Lilly’s older sister is obviously going to throw a party because what else would she be doing. Halloween party a couple of weeks early. You in?”

I consider it. My immediate impulse is to reject it – not the least of which because I don’t like parties, but also because I have plans with Jordan. But, you know. There’s parts of my brain at war here. And I have been exhausted. Not physically, because I think over the days, my regeneration factor keeps me from feeling the worst of the pain, the soreness and the fatigue, but mentally, emotionally, it’s a lot. Seeing the bad parts of Philadelphia, the parts my parents worked so hard to keep from me, and for good reasons.

Getting stabbed, you know, it’s not… great! Even if it’s less life-threatening for me, I have now been stabbed in the back at least four times, and it really does not get any easier. The pain… compounds, even if it doesn’t leave me injured permanently.

I get ready to text Jordan, preparing for an argument. “We might have to postpone our weekend plans. Friend I havent seen in a month is having a party. Is it cool if I take some time off to be a normal teenager again?” I ask, and the response comes almost immediately after I hit send.

“fuck yeah dude can i come?”

I stare at my phone, a little incredulously.

“I’ll ask,” I reply.

“fuck yeah” comes the immediate response.

---

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